Trader Guide

Table of Contents

1. ZuluTrade Traders (Signal Providers)

A) Introduction to Traders Program

A "Trader" is a ZuluTrade user, who trades either on a Demo or Real account while ZuluTrade publishes his/her results and statistics publicly through the website. Each trading action performed in the Trader’s account is sent to all ZuluTrade Demo and Real accounts in the form of a broadcast signal.
Clients, who have chosen to follow the Trader ("Investors"), have the trading action automatically executed in their account, residing in their brokerage firm. Since a simple Trader signal is executed by various different brokers that have different trading interfaces and configurations, trading problems can occur. A possible instance is an orphan trade. An orphan trade is a trade that although it is closed in the Trader’s account, due to a variety of reasons, it may be left open on one or more of the Investors' Real accounts. This incident can lead to different results between the Trader and the Investor- e.g. although the Trader gains, the Investor ends up losing as a result of the trade having closed long after it had been closed in the Trader’s account. However, Traders have the ability to both monitor and close their Real Investors' positions that are detected as "orphans".
By using the tool for orphan trades, Traders can quickly and efficiently remedy this situation. Whenever a trade is closed in a Trader account, if any orphan trades exist, they will appear under the "Positions" tab within 5 minutes after having closed the trade. A table will appear displaying the Trader ticket, the number of users under the same broker for whom the order is still open, currency pair, date opened, entry and current values, and a profit tab. To close an orphan trade, click on the "close" option; the trade will immediately close and a corresponding close message will appear.
Investors can fine-tune and override Traders signals by configuring their settings in their ZuluTrade account portfolio, or even manually.

B) Creating a Trader account

Anyone can sign up to become a Trader. Simply register for your Trader account here. You can open up to 10 Trader accounts with the same email address. Competition however is fierce. Traders’ performance is constantly ranked by ZuluTrade's ZuluRank algorithm and the ZuluTrade community, so that only the best ones appear on the top of our lists.

For the European version of our Performance page, competition is even stronger! As per EU legislation, only the top 1000 Traders will be displayed and available to Investors residing with EU, provided that:

They have less than 30% Drawdown

Minimum trading time of at least 12 weeks

The profit per trade should be greater than 3 pips.

If you want to find out more about the way ZuluRank is calculated, please click here!

C) Trading platforms

Traders may select one of the following Trading Platforms to place their trades:

ZuluTrade+

In ZTP, both Live and Demo Traders are equipped with a fully-fledged Trading Station user interface with technical charts and indicators, along with the ability for Traders to create trading robots by running their own ZuluScripts. In more detail, the in-built Trading Station offers technical charts (Candlesticks, OHLC, Lines), a large variety of Indicators (Trend, Oscillators, Volatility, Volumes, Bill Williams, etc), custom lines/text/objects etc, all inside the Trader account, without the need for any external platform. Therefore as the platform is entirely web-based, the Trader account is shielded against connectivity issues and can run EAs uninterruptedly without the need for a VPS. For more details about how to create and run ZuluScripts, please see here.

ZuluTrading API

The ZuluTrading API can also be used with ZTP. ZuluTrade offers its own REST API which enables Traders to submit trading requests straight to their accounts from their own custom program. In other words, instead of logging in to the Trader account to manually open, manage and close trades, Traders can configure their own algorithm to do this for them. Although some basic programming skills are required, a comprehensive step-by-step guide is provided for setting up the ZuluTrading API.

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) platform

It is possible to link an external live or demo MT4 platform to a Trader account. In this case the Trader account becomes read-only and any trading activity that takes place in the MT4 account is copied over to the ZuluTrade account. The list of brokers compatible with Trader accounts can be found in the Settings tab of the Trader account, or by contacting Support.

ZuluTrade VPS

ZuluTrade offers Traders trading via MT4 the chance to host their trading strategy for free via ZuluTrade's own VPS service. ZuluTrade supports over 60 Brokers and there is no need to download any platform - the MT4 client of your choice will be pre-installed into your VPS account, and can be accessed via any browser.
The ZuluTrade VPS service is available only for Traders trading via MT4 terminals; there is a limited number of available VPS, so Traders should keep an eye out for the 'Connect to my VPS' button at your Settings tab - it appears only when VPS slots are available.
ZuluTrade VPS is a premium service and as such a fair use policy applies; if it is detected that the VPS service is misused in any way, then usage of the VPS service may be revoked. Typical examples of misuse are:

malicious intentions

low or excessive usage

use of 3rd party executables that interfere with the OS

multiple instances of MT4 clients and EAs

usage beyond ZuluTrade's environment, etc

Please also note that there is a limit of one free ZuluTrade VPS per physical person.

D) Performance, Stats and Indicators

As a Trader trades, their performance and position in the ZuluTrade Performance page will gradually evolve; moving up and down in ranking. All data and information of the Traders are taken into consideration in order to calculate their place in the ranking. Some decisive factors for the ZuluRank are (please note that this list is not exhaustive):

Maturity: How long the Trader has been trading for, reflected in ‘Weeks’.

Exposure: How many positions might be open at the same time, reflected in ‘Max Open Trades’, the 'NME' required, etc.

Drawdown: How many ups and downs the Trader’s historical performance has experienced.

Performance: Overall pips earned, average pips per trade and other performance metrics.

For Our European Performance Page only, the below mentioned factors are also taken into account in order to form the list of the top 1000 Traders:

The Maximum Drawdown of the Trader’s account should not have exceeded 30% of the total profit.

The minimum trading time is set to 12 weeks.

The profit per trade should not be less than 3 pips.

If you want to find out more about the way ZuluRank is calculated, please click here!

The Performance page is updated several times per day, as trades and Traders' statistics develop.
Performance page also contains visual indicators, helping Investors to identify certain Trader attributes. Most common of which are:

The Trader is using a Live Account.

The Trader is using a Demo Account and has a Live Account linked to his Trader one.

The Trader is using MT4 Expert Advisor

The Trader is operating on ZTP, using ZuluScripts

The Trader is submitting trading requests through ZuluTrading API

The Trader's strategy is complying with the FIFO rule and does not hedge

The Trader has an average user rating of at least 4 stars!

The Trader is trading correlated currency pairs, by using a natural hedging strategy that potentially lead to limited drawdown

The Trader is frequently trading economic calendar releases!

Zulu Veteran - a Trader that has been trading with ZuluTrade for more than 2 years with a consistently high ranking

Traders that have partially or fully verified their account.

In order to appear in the Performance page, a Trader must first close 1 trade, while a minimum of 12 weeks of trading activity is required in order to appear on the Performance page for Europe!

2. Payments

Traders’ compensation differs according to the Account Type of their Live Investors.

Volume Based Compensation – Classic Accounts

Profit Sharing Compensation – Profit Sharing Accounts

Volume Based Compensation Scheme

Traders earn 0.5 pips per lot, for each closed trade executed in a Live Investor account under Classic Account Model. Pip cost varies according to the currency pair traded, the type of account of the Investor etc.

Profit Sharing Compensation Scheme

Traders get compensated on a monthly basis according to the profits they generate on their Real Investors under Profit Sharing Account Model

Every time you generate a profitable monthly PnL to a Profit-Sharing Investor, you will be credited a 20% Performance Fee. This Fee will only apply for the amount above High Water Mark (“HWM”). HWM is the maximum profit made by the Trader and it is calculated on the 1st calendar day of each month since the Investor added the Trader to his portfolio.

For each profitable monthly PnL, the Trader will be compensated based on a 50% Payment-Reserve model. More specifically:

50% of the Performance Fee charged is being credited in the Trader’s account

The same amount (50%) is requested from Reserve bucket. The amount that will be released and credited is limited to the reserved amount generated from previous periods.

50% of the Performance Fee charged is added to the Trader’s Reserve Bucket for next periods.

Each Trader holds one Reserve Bucket for all his Profit Sharing Investors. The Reserve amount is updated on the 1st calendar day of each month based on the profits/losses generated on the Real Investor accounts from the Trader during the previous month.

Case 1: Profitable monthly PnL - Profit above HWM

Investor’s Monthly Performance Fee (20% of the Profit above High Water Mark) is split, as follows:

50% is credited in the Trader’s account

50% is credited from Reserve Bucket (if applicable - see the example below)

50% is placed into the Trader’s Reserve Bucket for future release.

Case 2: Negative monthly PnL

In case of underperforming, the Reserve amount will be deducted by 20% of the generated losses.

Case3: Recovering Losses Period - Profit below HWM

In case of a Recovering Losses Period, the Performance Fee will not apply, yet the Trader’s reserve will be increased by 20% of the generated Profit.

For example:

In June, a Trader makes a profit of $1000 - This will be the HWM. The Investor will be charged 20% out of the accumulated profit ($1000): $1000 x 20% = $200

Based on the Payment-Reserve Scheme, for the Trader

50% of the Performance Fee paid by the Investor will be credited in the Trader’s account immediately: $200 x 50% = $100.

50% of the Performance Fee paid by the Investor will be credited in the Trader’s account from the Reserve (in case there is available amount). In this example, there is no Reserve.

50% of the Performance Fee paid by the Investor will be reserved in the Trader’s Reserve Bucket: $200 x 50% = $100.

Monthly Reserve Amount = $100

Total Reserve Amount = $100

In July, the Trader has a negative month (-$100) – HWM remains $1000.

Performance Fee will not apply for the Investor

The Trader’s Reserve amount will be deducted by 20% of the losing amount:
-$100 x 20% = -$20.

Monthly Reserve Amount = -$20

New Total Reserve Amount = $80 (=$100 - $20)

In August, the Trader makes a profit of $500 – New HWM $1400

The first $100 is considered as Recovering Losses Amount (loss generated in July) and the Investor will not be charged any Performance Fee. However, the Trader’s Reserve amount will be refilled again with the amount of $20 (20% x $100).

Performance Fee will apply for the Investor, only for the $400 (amount above new HWM): $400 x 20% = $80.
The Trader will now receive

US Traders

ZuluTrade compensates US Traders by a variable monthly membership fee. Monthly compensations for Traders can vary depending on account size and signals generated per month. Please note that ZuluTrade Traders, who are NFA registered as an Introducing Broker (IB), receive half pip per lot for every trade generated in a Live account.

Initial Balance represents the Necessary Minimum Capital required to cover the Trader's maximum recorded historical drawdown. Aggregate customer capital following the Trader, corresponds to the average amount over the monthly period.

Subscription fee is determined by the number of signals generated by the Trader during the month. Below is the schedule used to determine the subscription fee.

5 - 20 Signals = $50 Subscription fee

21 - 30 = $100

31 - 60 = $200

61 - unlimited = $350

Payment requests can include accrued commissions for only the previous month(s), up to the end of the calendar month prior to the request. The current methods of payment for all Traders are via bank wire transfer, PayPal and the ZuluTrade Mastercard. Payment Commissions are as follows:

$20 for PayPal requests up to $500 and a 3,9% fee (applied on the requested amount) for PayPal requests greater than $500.

$30 for each Wire Transfer within the United States.

$45 for each Wire Transfer outside the United States.

$20 for each payment to the ZuluTrade Mastercard.

Modest fees may be applied by financial institutions in the case of wire transfers. For more details, please consult your Bank.

Due to local restrictions, Japanese residents are eligible to register for a Trader account in ZuluTrade, however, no revenues will be generated for their trading activity.

AutoPay Service for Live Traders

Live Traders may select to receive their total outstanding commissions automatically in their Live Broker account at the 1st business day of each month.

Have completed the verification process by submitting a valid identification document as well as a proof of address.

Traders may enable the AutoPay service on the Revenue page of their account. On the 1st business day of each calendar month, they will be receiving automatically the accrued commissions of the previous month directly in their trading account. There are no minimum amount requirements nor fees apply if AutoPay is enabled.

Also please take the following under consideration:

To submit your request, ZuluTrade needs to be provided with sufficient evidence of the Trader credentials – typically we require a valid photo ID (passport, government identification card or government issued voter’s card) and a recent formal bill indicating your name and full current residential address.

Before issuing payments, all trades need to be checked against our Trading Compliance rules and relevant commissions need to be collected from our collaborating Brokers; the estimated time frame required to process a payment after a request has been made via our website is approximately 60 days.

An active account balance with a minimum of $100 is required before proceeding to request a payment.

Please ensure that your bank account details, PayPal account or ZuluTrade Mastercard is set up properly to avoid any complications with payment.

In case of disabled or terminated accounts, any accrued commissions that fail to reach the threshold of $100 get automatically rejected.

ZuluTrade values the safety of its Investors’ capital as an utmost priority. For this reason, Traders who apply abusive trading behavior, introducing high risks to their Investors, will be examined carefully and if deemed malicious, they will be refused compensation.

For each specific calendar month that a Trader presents a negative Total Monthly PnL performance (in pips or in $), the Trader will not be compensated. Total Monthly PnL includes unrealized PnL deriving from the end of month valuation of the Trader’s open positions.

Please note that payment must be requested within 30 days of receipt of the termination notification. Payment requests received after this period will be rejected.

Accounts with considerable deposits can be characterized from the Broker as Institutional due to the low spread offered. Compensation for such accounts is 0.1 pips per lot executed in a Real Investor account.

3. Trading Compliance Rules

Trading

When trading from a Demo account, please make sure your trading strategy complies with the following restrictions:

There is an upper limit of 100 market and 100 pending orders, as well as a limit of 5000 update signals, permitted to be broadcast to Investors within a 24-hour interval.

Signals to create market/pending orders should have a minimum time interval of 5 seconds from the last one accepted in order to be broadcast to Investors.

Maximum overall number allowed of open - market and pending - orders is limited to 100; any further signals will not be broadcast to Investors.

Please note that none of the above restrictions apply to Traders operating on a Live Account.

Trading from MT4 Terminals

In addition to the above rules for Traders operating on MT4 terminals and outside of the ZuluTrade web interface, compliance with the following rules is also expected:

Closing partial lots is not supported.

Deleting Stop/Limit via EA (updating Stop/Limit from non-zero values to zero via EA) is not supported and related signals will not be broadcast to Investors.

We support trading in Forex, CFDs, Indices, Gold and Silver.

Altering of mt4 trading records and statistics in any way is strictly prohibited.

Closing trades via the 'Close by' type is not supported.

Inappropriate Trading Behaviors

ZuluTrade values the safety of its Investors’ capital as an utmost priority. For this reason, Traders who apply abusive trading behavior, introducing high risks to their Investors, will be examined carefully and if deemed malicious, they will be refused compensation and may be banned from future use of ZuluTrade’s services.

In order to avoid extremes, Traders are required to comply with a minimum set of guidelines that aim to reduce risks, such as:

A Trader's maximum total draw-down should not exceed their profit in pips. This applies once there is an adequate record of Trader's performance, e.g. once overall PnL exceeds 1000 pips.

No positions should be allowed to reach losses of 700 pips or more. The use of stop loss at reasonable values is mandatory to ensure Investors' safety. A careful and short use of Stop-Loss will also assist and promote you in our Ranking algorithm. Large stop-losses or no stop-losses is not appropriate trading.

ZuluTrade is not endorsing a winning trades ratio close to 100%. It is a potentially risky strategy as it may indicate exposure to unusually large draw downs.

Note that the above thresholds in pips are indicative for basic FX pairs. Please assume equivalent amounts for exotic pairs including XAU, XAG or CFDs.

Expiration Dates

Oil and Natural Gas have a monthly expiration (please see the table below). Open positions will be closed at bid/offer at 22:00 GMT* (21:45 on Fridays). The only consequence of this is that clients will realize any floating P/L at the time the position is closed. There are no rollovers for any oil contracts offered. Also all pending stop and limit orders that are associated with the expiring contract will be cancelled.

Expiration Dates

US Oil

UK Oil

NGAS

2016

19-Dec

28-Dec

27-Dec

2017

19-Jan

30-Jan

26-Jan

20-Feb

27-Feb

23-Feb

20-Mar

30-Mar

28-Mar

19-Apr

27-Apr

25-Apr

19-May

30-May

25-May

19-Jun

29-Jun

27-Jun

19-Jul

28-Jul

26-Jul

21-Aug

30-Aug

28-Aug

19-Sep

28-Sep

26-Sep

19-Oct

30-Oct

26-Oct

17-Nov

29-Nov

27-Nov

18-Dec

27-Dec

26-Dec

Treasury products have a quarterly expiration (please see the table below). Clients that hold an open position on the Expiration Date will be closed at our bid/offer at 21:00 GMT for BUND, the only consequence of this is the client will realize any floating P/L at the time it is closed. There are no rollovers for all Treasury contracts offered.

4. Recommendations for Effective Strategies

Scalping is not Recommended.
Due to the combination of different trading policies, configuration and rate feeds of various brokers to whom your Investors may subscribe, scalping is not a recommended manner of sending signals to your Investors. The practice frequently leads to very inconsistent results for different broker accounts.

Trading During News
Many brokerage firms will often reject trading signals during News announcements that affect the market, resulting in possible discrepancies between the execution in your account and your Real Investors.

Trading with Unrealistic Amounts of Virtual Funds
Apart from producing unrealistic trading results, no trader will ever be able to relate with your strategy if your starting balance is extremely high, or you trade huge amounts of lots.

Accurate Strategy descriptions
Your Strategy description needs to be accurate and descriptive, so that your Investors can be aware of what to anticipate from your trading activity.
As unexpected trading behavior is not appreciated by your ZuluTrade Investors, any Strategies that are not in accordance with your actual trading behavior will be disapproved, affecting your ZuluRank accordingly.

Up-to-date Status
Your current Status should always be up to date. Please keep in mind that Investors can request for a Status Update, in which case you will be notified via email and expected to provide a status update as shortly as possible. Awkward silences are not friendly towards your ZuluTrade Investors, so please ensure timely updates are provided.

5. Suspension

Suspension of a Trader’s account may occur in two ways: temporarily as a warning, or permanently, leading to prohibition from using the service. Liability for any consequences from a Trader account getting suspended burdens the account holder.

Temporary Suspension

Traders linked with MT4 terminals that violate the Compliance Policy Rules, will be automatically disconnected from their MT4 accounts.
They can try to re-connect after they have reconfigured their strategy according to the suspension reason.

Permanent Suspension

Inactive Accounts. A Trader account is considered inactive if there is no trading activity for a certain period of time.

All Trader accounts that have been inactive for more than 3 months will be permanently suspended.

Especially for Trader accounts linked with MT4 terminals, the permitted inactivity period is limited to 1 month.

Programs

Features

This site is not intended to be a solicitation of transactions to customers living in the United States of America.

Trading spot currencies involves substantial risk and there is always the potential for loss. Your trading results may vary. Because the risk factor is high in the foreign exchange market trading, only genuine "risk" funds should be used in such trading. If you do not have the extra capital that you can afford to lose, you should not trade in the foreign exchange market. No "safe" trading system has ever been devised, and no one can guarantee profits or freedom from loss.

The hypothetical performance results displayed on this website are hypothetical results in that they represent trades made in a demonstration (“demo”) account. Transaction prices were determined by assuming that buyers received the ask price and sellers the bid price of quotes Zulutrade receives from the Forex broker at which a Signal Provider maintains a demo account. The hypothetical results do not include any additional mark-ups or commissions which may be charged by a customer’s Forex broker and are based on a one lot trade size. Trades placed in demo accounts are based on a Signal Provider having access to an unlimited amount of funds. As a result, demo accounts are not subject to margin calls and have the ability to withstand large, sustained drawdowns which a customer account may not be able to afford. Trades placed in demo accounts are not subject to price slippage which may occur when a signal is actually traded in a customer account. The number of pips gained or lost by each Signal Provider may be based on the trading of mini, micro or standard lots. The performance of customers electing to trade a different lot size from those used by a Signal Provider will therefore vary. Further, customers may place trades independent of those provided by a Signal Provider or place customized orders to exit positions which differ from those of a Signal Provider. All performance results presented only include the results of completed trades and do not reflect the profit or loss on open positions. Due to differences in the bid/ask offered by various counterparties, all trades executed in the account of a Signal Provider may not be executed in a customer account if the bid/ask of the Forex broker at which the customer maintains the customer’s account is different from that of the Signal Provider’s broker or due to volatility in the market. Customers may elect not to follow all of the trading signals provided by the signal providers or be able trade the recommended number of contracts due to insufficient funds in an account. Therefore, the results portrayed are not indicative of an account which may have traded all a Signal Provider’s signals or contracts. Further, by electing to follow a number of different Signal Providers at one time, customers may not be able to follow all of the signals generated due to the customer’s account having insufficient funds. Accordingly, the performance of customer accounts may vary signicantly from the results portrayed on this website.

HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS HAVE MANY INHERENT LIMITATIONS, SOME OF WHICH ARE DESCRIBED BELOW. NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY ACCOUNT WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFITS OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWN. IN FACT, THERE ARE FREQUENTLY SHARP DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS AND THE ACTUAL RESULTS SUBSEQUENTLY ACHIEVED BY ANY PARTICULAR TRADING PROGRAM. ONE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS IS THAT THEY ARE GENERALLY PREPARED WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT. IN ADDITION, HYPOTHETICAL TRADING DOES NOT INVOLVE FINANCIAL RISK, AND NO HYPOTHETICAL TRADING RECORD CAN COMPLETELY ACCOUNT FOR THE IMPACT OF FINANCIAL RISK IN ACTUAL TRADING. FOR EXAMPLE, THE ABILITY TO WITHSTAND LOSSES OR TO ADHERE TO A PARTICULAR TRADING PROGRAM IN SPITE OF TRADING LOSSES ARE MATERIAL POINTS WHICH CAN ALSO ADVERSELY AFFECT ACTUAL TRADING RESULTS. THERE ARE NUMEROUS OTHER FACTORS RELATED TO THE MARKETS IN GENERAL OR TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ANY SPECIFIC TRADING PROGRAM WHICH CANNOT BE FULLY ACCOUNTED FOR IN THE PREPARATION OF HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS AND ALL OF WHICH CAN ADVERSELY AFFECT ACTUAL TRADING RESULTS.

[1] The Futures Commission Merchant ("FCM") and ZuluTrade are compensated for their services through the spread between the bid/ask prices or there may be a cost to initiate a trade through the bid/ask spread. Signing up is totally free, and there is NO contract and NO monthly fees, ever.

[2] Past performance is not indicative of future results. This website does not make any representation whatsoever that the above mentioned trading systems might be or are suitable or that they would be profitable for you. Please realize the risk involved with trading Forex investments and consult an investment professional before proceeding. The trading systems herein described have been developed for sophisticated traders who fully understand the nature and the scope of the risks that are associated with trading. Should you decide to trade any or all of these systems' signals, it is your decision. The performance results displayed on this website are hypothetical in that they represent trades made in a demonstration ("demo") account. The trades placed in the demo account take into consideration the spread between the bid and ask prices which would have been paid by a trader if an actual trade was made. Transaction prices were determined by assuming that buyers received the ask price and sellers the bid price of quotes provided by a large Forex broker.